The WHO has just declared the end of the Covid emergency and what sounds like an untimely denial is already arriving from China: infections on the rise, with 40 million cases a week expected by the end of the month, and as many as 65 million at the epidemic peak on June. It’s all my fault – respiratory disease expert Zhong Nanshan would have explained speaking during the Greater Bay Area Science Forum of Guangdong – of the new XBB sub-variants. Those with imaginative names (Gryphon, Kraken, Arturo, etc…) that we have come to know in recent months: very fast and immunoevasive, capable of making infections splash again in the country despite the first, great wave, Chinese epidemic has just ended . If the forecasts materialize, what will it mean for the Asian giant? And for the rest of the world? Should Covid – in short – still have to scare us?
Looking closely, it is not easy to understand how to understand Nanshan’s statements. In the same speech in which he announced these catastrophic numbers, the pulmonologist in fact reassured the country’s resilience, assuring that by now 85% of the population has already contracted the virus in recent months. That reinfections with the new (for the Chinese) variants are mostly mild. And that specific vaccines are on the way that should provide targeted protection against these viruses, capable of easily neutralizing the immunological memory of those who have already fallen ill even recently. Net of the reassurances, however, the numbers mentioned seem really too high to be taken lightly.
“I think these are very wrong statements, made at the wrong time by a country that has done everything wrong during this pandemic” Matteo Bassetti, director of the Infectious Diseases clinic of the San Martino hospital in Genoa, explains to Today.
“What do they mean that there will be 65 million people with colds? Because you can’t have 65 million people with colds without impacting the health system, even in a country as big as China. So I think these numbers are far-fetched, because otherwise they would be extremely worried. Having said that, it is true that we are talking about variants that give mild symptoms, especially in the case of reinfections, and that China is probably in a position to see new epidemic waves return in recent months”.
The XBB variants are the subgroup derived from Omicron. And like omicrons, they are extremely infectious, capable of evading the immune response developed following a previous infection. Fortunately they tend to give mild symptoms, concentrated in the upper airways. In Italy and in the West, however, they have been widespread for months (it is from here that they actually reached China), and they have not caused any particular problems, nor are they expected to cause any in the future. In China, however, according to Bassetti, less effective vaccines than ours have been used, and therefore it is possible that the population is more exposed to the risk of new infections. Also for the choices made in recent years, with the zero Covid strategy maintained until last winter which, inevitably, created an epidemic situation very different from the one we have known in the rest of the world.
“I don’t think they will have major problems in the next few months, but in any case theirs is an absolutely local affair”, concludes Bassetti.
“In the rest of the world, the Covid emergency is certainly over. We are in an endemic situation in which the virus circulates without causing major problems, thanks to vaccinations and the enormous proportion of people who have already encountered the virus, and have therefore a certain immune protection at least against serious illness” reassures Bassetti. “Ema will also soon approve the new vaccines aimed against the XBB variants, which will be available for next autumn and will provide extra protection for the elderly and frail people. In this sense, I would say that the pandemic is certainly over, not in terms of spreading the virus perhaps, but certainly as a health emergency”.